Paperback: WWII: a short history by Norman Stone (Penguin, £9.99)

Before 1914 the Western world seemed to be moving forward smoothly. And then...bang! A terrible war, followed pretty quickly by an even worse one. Why? “The short answer is, of course, Germany,” says Norman Stone, a great storyteller of a historian. He moves us through the lead-up to the Second World War, and through the war itself, with brisk aplomb.

He gives us the main players — Hitler, Mussolini (“a journalist who thought in headlines”), Chamberlain, Franco — and then Churchill. From the Sudetenland to Nagasaki, he’s got it all in, which means you can see it from a distance — a quick read, and very useful.